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206 of 210 people found the following review helpful.
A great alternative to the ipad
By michelle
I've been looking for an e-book reader that has mp3 potential and video playback for awhile so its one device instead of 3. I did look at the ipad but its just massive and the whole point for me is to reduce the weight of a book in my hand and the ipad is quite weighty. The galaxy tab is the first item I have seen with all three at a relatively nice handheld sort of size.The wireless on this system works straight away and in the welcome stuff it helps you get straight onto the net so you can immediately take benefit of the uses of this tablet.This is really quick to use, the applications load up fast and it has some lovely features to it. The sound coming out of the tab is pretty decent for video playback and mp3's but I reckon if your listening to mp3's through it your more likely to have headphones in. The video playback plays seamlessly, no motion blur or pausing whilst the device finds more of the file. I only watched a 20 minute episode but it handled it well and it looked very pretty through this hd screen.There is one game on startup and it doesn't look that interesting but there is a samsung games app linking you straight to their games. The same goes for their videos/films.The e-book reader included is kobo and the prices on the store are quite high compared to amazons kindle. You can get a kindle app so you can run your tab as if it was a kindle and I have found that to be the best e-book software to use. With the book prices being about the price of an actual paperback even if some of them aren't yet in paperback and the features available on it with the white writing on a black screen and the various text sizes its definitely the better option. Of course you could buy a kindle but your kindle wont allow you to listen to music and watch videos, use the gps through google maps, browse the net, give you the news updates you want and updating your facebook status with very little effort.This is my first adventure into the android system and I have found the apps available through the android market upscale to the screen size of the tab for the most part very well, my only let down so far has been a live wallpaper that wasn't quite the size of the screen but it was free and thus not a big loss.The only thing that worries me is the charger, not owning a samsung mobile device before I've not noticed how alike the charger is to the ipod and such. With it not being a standard usb style charger it means you can't get a new cable to charge it on the cheap you have to buy the official one at least at the moment and they average between £15-£20. Mind you the battery does last for days when on standby and can be up to 12 hours dependant on what you are doing at the time of use, obviously movie/mp3 playback eats away at the battery, but just browsing the net doesn't use as much.Overall a great all in one device that I'm very happy to have taken the risk on.
902 of 927 people found the following review helpful.
From iPad to Tab...
By Ajax
When Apple launched the iPad, I purchased one immediately. I remember being delighted by the large screen, and the effortless web surfing experience. After owning the iPad for a little over a week, however, I then wondered what exactly I was going to use it for - I had a Macbook Pro, and a smartphone - and the iPad failed to complete many tasks I wanted it to, and certainly failed to bring anything new in terms of functionality. Needless to say, it was sold on eBay shortly afterwards.Since then, I have been waiting for a tablet device to come to market that offered a little bit more than just a large touchscreen. My wait is now over.My Samsung Galaxy Tab arrived on November 1st, so I have been using it every day for just over a week. What a fabulous device! I have read various tech journals saying the iPad is better, and to those who just want a couch-surfer, maybe so. I guess the web experience on the iPad is a little more polished. But any criticism of the Tab ends there. After a week, I am used to the touch screen interface and the way it reacts to my inputs, I am happy with the smoothness of the scrolling when viewing websites, and I'm ok with the reported lack of apps available on Android market (by comparison with the app store). I followed the tip on sizing apps to fill the screen, and that works just great.I use the device as a secondary phone, for personal calls, via a bluetooth headset. Call quality is excellent, and I haven't had a dropped call yet - can't say the same with my 3gs! The email client is fantastic, pushes my POP account and gmail over, and collects them all in a unified inbox. Keyboard is so easy for thumbing in portrait - I find it really fast and easy, but I'm no touch typist. Contacts and calendar synced up with google, great use of the extra screen size over a smartphone. I use google docs and thinkfree office for work stuff, mostly spreadsheet stuff, and it works well, and web browsing is just fine with full flash onboard. iPlayer looks a treat.Many have wondered whether a 7" screen is large enough to be better than a smartphone - yes it is - way better. Screen size between 3.5" phone and 7" Tab may not sound much, but it seems about three times the size of my HTC Desire. Makes all the difference in the world - no more squinting! Camera works well, not fantastic by any means, but I've taken some reasonable snaps, and that's good enough for me. I generally take the pictures on my HTC Desire, and bluetooth 'em over to the Tab, then use the Tab to view the gallery - a nice visual experience, and great to pass around amongst friends and family.Widgets, shortcuts, feeds and live wallpaper all help to make the Tab feel personal - I've got all nine screens pretty rammed. I have a 32Gb micro SD card in the slot, so bags of space - keep all the media on the card, works great - and you have the option of storing loads of media on lots of different cards - never run out of storage space.I have used the device twice as a navigation tool - it has now replaced my TomTom. Enough said.The Tab feels like a quality piece of kit - doesn't crease or flex, no creaking, screen seems tough, and plastics feel good quality - no scratches yet. Speakers are loud, and sound quality not bad at all. Battery life - 13 hours use including constant WiFi, bluetooth, regular surfing, email on push, calls, navigation, and angry birds, of course!As an ebook reader, I am quite impressed - I loaded a couple of books up, and it seems great - nice, clear text, I can look up long words to increase my loquaciousness, and the device feels light and is easy to grip - even lying in bed. It is fab as a video player - seamless, good screen size, plays every format I've thrown at it.I've downloaded PowerAmp from the Android market as a music player - works well - Angry Birds is cool on the bigger screen, FB works fine, what else do you want??? Notifications bar is useful, bluetooth is fast, multitasking is awesome, file manager helpful, and I've saved the best bit 'till last...It fits in my jeans pocket!I have never written a review before (as you may be able to detect), but the Samsung Galaxy Tab made me put my initial thoughts in writing - it really is that good. I doubt you could be disappointed, and if you are, an update to Gingerbread will probably sort you out!
521 of 538 people found the following review helpful.
It could have been so much more.
By J. Potter
The Galaxy Tab is a 7" touchscreen/tablet device supporting internet connectivity via WiFi or a 3G SIM card, which you will either have to purchase separately or may come as a deal if you get the Galaxy Tab from a phone operator. The TAB runs the Android OS (version 2.2 at this time), which is written by a company owned by Google. Android can be found on a number of devices and smartphones that compete directly with Apple. Most notably in my experience Android is found on the HTC Desire. It was in using this that I got to thinking what a great idea Android on a big screened tablet would be.So when I saw the Galaxy TAB I practically jumped on it. And I have to say almost a month down the line I love using it more with each day. It is now the multimedia device I use more than any I own. I read Kindle on the TAB, I read Epub on the TAB, its great having both ebook formats together on the same device. It's my alarm clock, my master contacts list and diary synced via Google Sync, a toy for watching movies on the train or listening to music, for playing games. The Asphalt racing game that comes with it is great fun. I use the TAB to check live train times from a shortcut on the home screen, I commute daily and over christmas this saved me so often. I read all the news, weather, sports and entertainment feeds I would ordinarily by squinting at my Blackberry or using the vulcan nerve pinch zoom on the screen of the HTC desire. The TAB comes with 512Mb internal memory, 16Gb internal storage to which you can add another 32Gb with a microSD card of your own. The 1024 x 600 resolution of this screen is superb for movies, the sound without headphones is good and clear, excellent with headphones. Browsing the web is a real pleasure to be appreciated by anyone who has tried to view full internet pages on a phone screen. Full Amazon displays perfectly on it. Android is an excellent and very featured OS that is well supported with lots of good Apps. The apps are largely professionally written with a great mix between productivity, fun and outright usefulness. My favourites being a slingbox viewer (paid for) and Ignition (logmein - also paid for). In fact almost everything that is good with the Galaxy TAB derives from Android and its very wide support.And sadly almost everything that doesn't work comes from the belief it would seem, that Samsung thought they only had to put Android onto good hardware and the result would be an excellent product. It is great, but it could have been soo much more.So what's wrong? First and foremost the USB connector. It has been over a year since almost all mobile companies standardised on the MicroUSB connection for charging and PC connectivity via USB. Apple did not, but they have a unique position in the market that no other company has. So why oh why did Samsung decide on a propriety USB connector? It is only a matter of time before I lose this cable or forget it or both. The logic behind a standard microUSB was you could literally pick up the same cable you use for any other device and it would be good to go. At a tenner for additional Samsung TAB USB cables, this 'feature' alone knocked one star from my rating. This in the extra thought processes I have to put into knowing I have the cable to hand wherever I go. Hugely disappointing when these gadgets are all geared around making our lives easier, to then deliberately introduce a proprietary USB cable that will almost certainly trip me up repeatedly in the future.While the TAB does have this amazing 1024 x 600 screen, there has been almost no customisation of the Android OS to take advantage of this outside of internet browsing. Which lost it the other star. Screens don't fit, graphics sometimes disappear or don't refresh properly. This is not an all the time thing but takes an edge off the polish. There is a real lack of interesting widgets. Sound trivial? Widgets implemented properly really add to the Android experience and provide accessibility to information you will not find on contemporary Apple devices. Despite the sleek Android interface the hardware still lags quite badly sometimes. This is unnecessary given the hardware specification of the TAB, quite simply little time was spent tailoring android for the hardware it would be running on. The default keyboard setting on mine was the Swype mode, in landscape it is barely bigger than in portrait mode, a tiny cluster of keys grouped in the centre of the screen bookended by lots of white space. Even when Swyping where you drag your finger between keys I struggled to see the keyboard beneath my Swyping finger. It took me a while to figure how to turn off swype as it was not obvious. Properly integrated, switching input modes would have been a button, not having to hold your finger on the text box for four seconds, which had to be sourced from the manual. Very frustrating.Additionally in positioning the Apps and widgets on the home screens no attempt has been made to make them work within the higher resolution. So basically nothing sits central or symmetrically, making the screens look left justified or right justified, if that makes sense. I could go on, the lack of customisation is apparent at almost every level.In summary, the Galaxy TAB is a great bit of technology that brings together the functionality of multiple devices into one. I use it all the time and love doing so. It only gets three stars because I paid a lot of money for this and there are some fundamental flaws out of the box. The awful proprietry cable is a real show stopper for me, it's one of the things that I dislike so much in Apple's world view. The Galaxy Tab software out of the box is rough around the edges, rushed is the word that keeps springing to mind. Some of these issues are and will be fixed, but for something this expensive we should expect more. Bottom line - if you're considering the Apple iPad and the Galaxy Tab, I think the iPad is still your choice. For those seeking a tablet solution that is not iPad I think Samsung is the best product right now. Get one of these considering all I said above, and I doubt you will be disappointed.03 March 2011. An update from questions I got in comments for this review: The touch screen works very well. You will get glare in some lighting conditions including outside but this is solved by adjusting the angle you view the device as you would a laptop screen. The TAB also has excellent brightness control. The proprietary cable has repeatedly tripped me up as leaving WiFi on will drain the battery in half a day, especially when there is no WiFI to connect to, so you need to carry a cable with you. Turning off WiFi when you don't need it will give you a couple days of battery. Of course you will forget. The cable is a real sore point that gets me winging every time someone asks about the TAB. A very big mistake in my eyes to have a proprietary cable and I think that everyday having used it now for nearly 4 months. The Android OS is brilliant, I find new uses for it the longer I use it. I still think Samsung should have worked harder at integrating their hardware with Android although you do get used to the 'features'.I hope this has been helpful to you.
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